What happened this last week in the United States Senate has disturbed deeply the majority of the country given the low approval rating of Judge Kavanaugh and the Senate’s majority vote for him to assume a seat on the High Court.
So many wanted to see a few Republican and Democratic Senators show that they are “Profiles in Courage” who would choose to vote on principle “no” on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
The following op-ed articles in the NY Times and Washington Post articulate well the meaning of Maine’s Senator Susan Collins’s pivotal speech and deciding vote for Kavanaugh.
After she made her speech, former Obama Administration leader Susan Rice said that she may challenge Collins in her 2020 reelection bid. If Rice does, I will support her with my dollars. One friend, Glenn Krinsky, who referred me to these two articles, promised to fly to Maine and knock on doors in an effort to elect Rice and defeat Collins.
Here are the two op-eds.
Susan Collins Is the Worst Kind of Maverick – She votes with the most right-wing members of her party, even while attempting to occupy some imaginary moral high ground. – By Jennifer Finney Boylan – New York Times – https://nyti.ms/2zUTIuT
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 
John- I was in Senator Collins’ office with a group of activists during her speech. We weren’t welcomed in, we pushed our way in. The Capitol police cleared the hall of all the other protesters and it was just those of us in the office who were left. There were survivors who had ridden buses from Maine overnight to talk to her, so the emotion filled the room. We held our collective breath for 45 minutes. Her justification speech was unnecessarily cruel in its length and utter dismissiveness of the issues and the truth. When she talked about presumption of innocence and I thought of the hundreds of thousands of people who are incarcerated for “crimes” far less serious than the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, my heart split with frustration from the hypocrisy of it all. What has made some people harden their hearts so completely that they can’t even see our humanity any longer?
Chris Mobile 323.445.5184
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Had already read the Milbank, which I found raising all the hypocrisy, and now I will head to the NYT.
Collins and Heidi Heitkamp from ND were on 60 Minutes and one is truly and eloquently a “Profile in Courage.” She said she knew her vote could cost her 6 more years in the Senate but that she had too much respect for the Supreme Court and the Senate to vote otherwise. I am sending her money tonight.